The Influence of the Middle East on Balkan Culture by Lisa Adeli ([email protected])
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The Influence of the Middle East on Balkan Culture By Lisa Adeli ([email protected]) 1. Intro.: Play the Macedonian song “Jovano, Jovanke” [available on Bilja Krstić’s Zapisi CD – can be purchased on Yu4You website or email me] and pass around picture books of the Balkans. (Slide 2) A. Explain that the song is a love story of a guy who is in love with a girl (and she likes him too), but her mother won’t let them be together. B. Language: What do you notice about the language? Is it a Middle Eastern language? Greek? No, actually, it is a Slavic language. (You can tell it’s not at all like Greek because of all the sibilant sounds – sh, ch, zh, dj – that Greek doesn’t have very much.) Point out that although Greek was the main language and culture in Macedonia at the time of Alexander the Great, in later centuries Slavs inhabited the area. Therefore, Macedonian is a Slavic language, not Greek. (The Greeks, however, still hope to reclaim the area, so the question of the ethnicity of Macedonians is still very controversial today. In fact, most international organizations use the unwieldy name “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” because the Greeks won’t let them call it “Macedonia” because they don’t want a Slavic-speaking state to use that name - even though that is the only name that the area has ever had. Also, to make the section of Macedonia that belongs to Greece more “Greek,” the government has settled many Greek-speaking refugees from Cyprus to try to change the ethnic balance. Notice that ethnic politics in the Balkans is highly emotional.) C. Music: What do you notice about the music – instruments and rhythms? Note: The strong Middle Eastern influences in the beginning and the chorus, but the more traditional Macedonian rhythm in the verses (unusual, 11-count measure). D. Why do you think Macedonian music would have Middle Eastern overtones? What kind of connection is there between that part of Europe and the Middle East? E. What do you notice from the picture books? What geographical features characterize the Balkans (mountainous, some open plans, Adriatic, Black, and Aegean Seas)? Note that the mountainous landscape served to isolate groups of people, but there were plenty of passes, so the mountains did not keep out invaders. 2. History & maps of the spread and retreat of the Ottoman Empire in Europe A. As you will see, Macedonia (referring back to the song) was under Ottoman rule for nearly 600 years – from the mid-1300s until 1913! How might that account for the Middle Eastern influences on the music? B. What other areas did the Ottoman Empire rule? 1. Look at the map of the Ottoman Empire’s territory at its height (Slide 3). Note that it included North Africa, much of the Arabic-speaking countries of western Asia, Turkey, and southeastern Europe from Greece up through Hungary and across to Ukraine. 2. The second map (Slide 4) shows the territory expanding in the Balkans. What peoples/places are under Ottoman rule? (Greeks, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Albanians, Serbs, Bosnians, Romanians) 3. Slide 5 shows the empire at its height in Europe. Now what parts are under Ottoman rule? (Croatia, Hungary) 4. Slides 6 & 7 show the gradual decline of the empire. Which European peoples were under Ottoman rule for only a short time? (Hungarians, Slovenes, Croats, etc.) Which were under the longest? (Serbs, Greeks, Romanians, and especially Macedonians, Bulgarians, Albanians, Bosnians. Macedonia and Albania were under Ottoman rule until 1913!) 3. Direct impact on Balkan society A. Centuries of warfare led to a mixing of populations. For example, large numbers of Serbs fled north, and Albanians replaced them in Kosovo. But paradoxically, the Ottoman system allowed each group to maintain its separate identity, determined by language and religion. Therefore, in the Balkans, different groups live interspersed, but each group keeps its own language, religion, and culture. For example, in Bosnia, one village might be inhabited by Croats; the village next to it by Serbs, and the one next to that by Bosnian Muslims. (This is the root of the ethnic strife today – when modern nationalism affected a multi-national region.) SLIDE 8: CIA’s map of religions/ethnic groups. Note that some are language groups (Albanians, Romanians), while others speak a common language but their “ethnicity” is determined by religion (ex: in Bosnia, Orthodox Christians =Serbs; Catholics=Croats; Muslims=Muslim “nationality”). B. Religions of the Balkans. Notice how the religious mix in the Balkans was affected by Ottoman rule and the Muslim practice of allowing other monotheistic religions to exist. (For example, the Ottomans did not persecute Jews and Muslims the way Spain did, and they did not forcibly convert conquered people to their religion.) 1. Most people in the Balkans were – and still are -Christians (mostly Orthodox or Catholic). The Ottomans had a policy of religious toleration, so people kept their own religion and culture. (Examples of Christian religions in Ottoman time: SLIDE 9 - Greek Meteora Monastery – ‘meteora’ means ‘suspended in the air’ – has an out-of-the way location, which protected it from Ottoman interference; Slide 10 - Graćanica monastery built by Serbs in Kosovo during the 14th century; Slide 11 - fresco of a ‘saint,’ King Milutin’s wife Simonide - the eyes in the painting were gouged out because some Muslims were outraged at the use of ‘idols’ in Christian churches.) Christians faced some problems, however: They had a lower status, had to pay a special tax, and were sometimes subjected to the forcible recruitment of some of their boys for government service. Also, some Christians converted voluntarily to Islam (ex. the Bosnian Muslims), and the Ottomans also frustrated Christians by lumping them all together instead of realizing that they spoke separate languages. Thus, Greeks dominated the Orthodox church institutions. (It wasn’t until later that Serbs, Macedonians, etc. demanded their own Orthodox church leaders.) SLIDE 12: Also, the Ottomans sometimes turned churches into mosques, as seen by the picture of the Bihać church. 2. Jews: The Ottoman tolerance of people belonging to monotheistic religions led many Jews who were fleeing the Inquisition in Spain in the 1400s or persecution in other parts of Christian Europe to settle in the Ottoman Empire. In the 16th century, for example, during the reign of the Ottoman ruler Suleiman the Magnificent, the Sephardic Jewish community on the island of Rhodes grew rapidly since he gave them autonomy, religious freedom, a 100-year tax exemption, free housing, and a guaranteed supply of kosher meat at reasonable prices. (Slide 13 & 14: Jewish quarter and synagogue.) Rhodes soon became a major Sephardic center. Bosnia and other parts of the Balkans also hosted important Jewish communities from about the 15th century. Compared to the rest of Europe, there was relatively little anti-Semitism in much of the Balkans (with the possible exception of Romania), partly due to the tradition of religious tolerance promoted by the Ottomans. This remained true throughout modern times. 3. Muslims: Although Christians and Jews had certain rights, the Muslims were the privileged elite with a greater share of the political power, so large numbers of people converted to Islam in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Albania, and Crete as well as smaller numbers of converts in other places. (In most parts of Ottoman Europe, the Christian nobility was removed and replaced by a foreign nobility. Therefore, in the 19th century, when Serbia, Greece, etc. became independent and threw out the Ottoman rulers, they were nations without a traditional aristocracy. In Bosnia, on the other hand, the native nobility retained its position because they converted to Islam.) C. Ottoman Architecture 1. mosques – Muslim places of worship. (Slide 15 - Gazi Husrev Beg Mosque in Sarajevo and Slide 16 - mosque in Kosovo in the town of Prizren.) 2. cemeteries: Note that just as Christian graves are often marked with a cross, Muslim graves in Bosnia (and Turkey) are often marked with a turban (Slide 17.) 2. secular structures - bridges: Slide 18 – Ottoman-built bridge in the city of Skopje, Macedonia; Slide 19 – Mostar, Bosnia (the name ‘mostar’ means place of the bridge). During the Bosnian civil war in the 1990s, the Croats blew up this bridge, symbolically and physically breaking the connection between the Croatian part of the city and the Muslim half. The bridge has now been rebuilt but is nowhere near as wonderful as the original, Turkish-built bridge; Slide 20 – the famous “bridge on the Drina” in Višegrad, Bosnia. The bridge is at the center (and in the title) of the most famous novel by Nobel Prize-winning Bosnian author Ivo Andrić. 4. Long-term influence of the Middle East on Balkan cultures A. Linguistic influences 1. The Serbian language has some many Turkish borrow words, so there is a special letter of the alphabet for a sound only found in such words (џ = the “j” sound we have in English, “John.” (Serbs use two of this letter in writing “George” - as in “George Bush.”) It is used in words like “mosque”, pronounced “jamia” in Serbian.) Slide 21. 2. In areas where there are a lot of Muslims, such as Bosnia, many Turkish, Persian, and Arabic words have come into the language and coexist with Slavic words. For example, “most” is the common (Slavic) word for bridge, but they also use ćuprija (chupriya). Or čašica (pronounced chashitsa) is the Slavic word for the little cup used for Turkish coffee, but it is also called fendžan (fenjan), a Middle Eastern word. There is even a whole dictionary of “Turkisms” in the Serbo- Croatian language.